Nowitzki discusses slow start to Hall of Fame career

The date was Feb. 5, 1999. At the time, the Dallas Mavericks were in Seattle to open the 50-game lockout-shortened season at Key Arena against the SuperSonics.

It also was the first NBA game for Dirk Nowitzki, the seven-foot forward from Germany who was the ninth pick of the 1998 draft and was poised to help pull this franchise from the depth of a disastrous decade of basketball. But it was a night that weighed heavily on Nowitzki, who finished his inaugural NBA game with just two points and no rebounds, and was 0-of-5 from the field in 16 minutes during a contest the Mavs lost to Seattle, 92-86, in overtime.

Indeed, this was not the way Nowitzki envisioned making his NBA debut.

“My first game was a crazy memory,” Nowitzki said during a news conference Tuesday at the Mavs’ practice facilities. “(It was) probably one of the worst games I’ve played as an NBA player. Just the magnitude of the moment. It was just overwhelming.”

The action on the court wasn’t the only thing that overwhelmed Nowitzki.

“I’m changing in the locker room (before the game) and all of a sudden (the media is) standing right there looking at me,” he said. “I’m like, ‘What are these people doing in the locker room like this? The players are getting ready.’ Everything was so different.”

Not only that, Nowitzki was playing against Sonics forward Detlef Schrempf, also from Germany and originally drafted No. 8 overall in 1985 by the Mavs. That matchup took on worldly significance in itself.

“The whole freaking warmups as I knew it was completely different,” Nowitzki said. “And meeting Detlef before the game, we took a picture at the jump circle.

“The whole thing was like a movie of myself. It was really hard to kind of focus on just basketball. I was nervous and anxious.”

Looking back, Nowitzki admits those feelings carried through a rookie season that saw him play 20.4 minutes per game and average just 8.2 points and 3.4 rebounds while shooting 40.5 percent from the field and 20.6 percent from three-point range while starting 24 of the 47 games he played in. That led to doubt creeping inside Nowitzki’s head.

“Did I make the right decision, should I have gone to college, should I have stayed in Europe,” he rhetorically asked himself. “But at the end of the day, just keep pushing, put your head down and really focus on what you can control.

“You can’t control playing time and all that other stuff. But you can control how hard you work and the effort you put in, if you come to practice early, if you leave late, or are you really giving everything you’ve got to this. So that’s what I would tell myself: Keep doing that, keep your work ethic and work through the hard times.”

Having grown up a world away in Germany, Nowitzki wasn’t really abreast of a lot of things in Texas during the time his NBA career started. So, the lifestyle here was also challenging.

“In a way the last 20, 20-something years, the world’s gotten a lot smaller with the Internet, with social media,” Nowitzki said. “But back then you just couldn’t hop on Google (non-existent at the time) and see what it’s like in Texas. So, I had no idea really what to expect and it was a hard time personally.

“It was a little bit of a language barrier. And then, of course that was the lockout year that came on top of it. And then the game was so different, so I had a hard time adjusting my first season. The language barrier, it was so tough that at times I didn’t really want to say anything. I was super quiet and was just trying to learn as much as I could on the fly.”

There was one memorable day, Nowitzki recalled, where the language barrier became extra taxing.

“I’ll always remember one time I didn’t practice my first year — I think I was banged up — and we had (center) Hot Rod Williams at the time and he sat next to me, and the entire hour-and-a-half he talked to me and tried to teach me something,” Nowitzki said. “I didn’t understand a word he said – because of his Louisiana accent.

“That kind of sums up my first year. I was just trying to learn stuff on the fly, on the go, with five or six games a week. It was a tough time.”

Those early tough times for Nowitzki eventually turned into good times, because not only did he become the NBA’s Most Valuable Player in 2007. But he also was a 14-time All-Star, averaged 20 or more points in 12 consecutive seasons, became one of the most difficult players to defend in the league, and also led the Mavs to an NBA championship in 2011.

Nowitzki also played his entire 21-year career with the Mavs, has a street named after him outside of American Airlines Center, has his No. 41 jersey retired in the AAC rafters, and has a statue of himself outside of the arena.

And the cherry on top of Nowitzki’s illustrious career will come Saturday when he’ll be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame during a festive ceremony in Springfield, Mass. Nowitzki knows that induction – reserved for the best basketball has to offer — within itself has made his struggles to reach the NBA mountaintop worthwhile.

“When you struggle, you go back to the gym and you try to find your way, and that’s what I always tried to do,” Nowitzki said. “That’s the only way really I knew how to get through tough times, and that would be my advice even now.

“And at the time I didn’t even know what I was doing. I was, ‘I’ve got to make this work.’ I’d go back to the gym, and now obviously that was my coping mechanism. I was just working hard and trying to make it work.”

Along the way, Nowitzki became a huge fan favorite in America and abroad. His infectious smile, his cool demeanor, the many times he made fun of himself, and his unique way of taking over games totally resonated with fans all across the world. Especially since Nowitzki never took himself serious.

And Nowitzki never forgot those fans, as he was often at the Mavs’ headquarters personally answering lots of mail from lots of fans stationed all over the globe. It almost was like this giant of a man was the people’s player.

“The Mavs have always done a good job from the beginning when I got here in saying that the community plays a big role in us being successful, that the community supports us and we need to take care of fans and the community,” Nowitzki said. “We’ve done community outreach events from the beginning and that’s how you sort of are raised into this league.

“It means a lot for the fans to come out and support us, so you need to learn at events, at family (events) — whatever the case may be — to pay that back and pay that respect back and (appreciate) the love and support that you get from the fans. I took fan mail serious. I tried to make it to the office every couple of weeks. Sometimes, of course it was harder than other times, but I always tried to do fan mail.”

In recent weeks Nowitzki has been pondering what he’s going to say once it’s his turn to walk on the big stage during this weekend’s Hall of Fame ceremonies. Much of his speech has already been written and will be on a teleprompter for him to read.

“But I really don’t want to stare at the teleprompter the entire night,” Nowitzki said. “Some stuff will be spontaneous. Of course, I have sort of planned what I want to say to everybody, but some stuff will just come out and be spontaneous in the moment. Then I’m sure there will also be some emotions involved, but overall hopefully I can sort of stick to the plan and execute pretty well.

“I’m not huge in public speaking, I’m not huge in being in the limelight. I’ve been super nervous leading up to this now the last few weeks. I’m going to try to hold it together and hopefully just really express that I’m extremely grateful to everybody who’s been involved in my career.”

Twitter: @DwainPrice